Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

We all want to accomplish more, to make the most of our lives and the hours of our day. Productive people accomplish more than everyone else, and it isn’t because they have less to do or more hours in the day. They do specific things that everyone does not do.

Yet, few of us accomplish all that we want to. Why is that? What do productive people know and do that others don’t?

I think this becomes especially relevant right now as so many people seem tired and struggling to keep up. If that’s you, learning how to use your morning more effectively can be a game changer and help you move ahead in life.

Here are five things productive people do in the morning:

5 things productive people do in the morning.
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1. Make their bed. I came across this from Admiral William McRaven, the Navy SEAL who commanded the operation to capture Osama Bin Laden. He says, “Start every day making your bed, which was the first task of the day at SEAL training. Doing so will mean that the first thing you do in the morning is to accomplish something, which sets the tone for the day, encourages you to accomplish more, and reinforces those little things in life matter. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made–that you made,” McRaven said, “and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

2. Read. Productive people read in the morning. It might be the Bible, a leadership book, but something that will grow them. This is pouring into themselves, so they have more to give to others. At this time, they don’t check their email. The most productive people check their email at lunch or a few hours into work. You’ll see why in #5.

3. Eat breakfast. Breakfast is the day’s most important meal and starts things off well. Productive people not only eat breakfast, but they eat a high-protein breakfast. That means no cereal. You will be hungry in an hour and then spend the day snacking, which will hurt your health, and you’ll end up overeating sugar, and you’ll feel it in the middle of the afternoon.

How to fuel yourself in the morning to make it through the day.
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4. Sleep. While sleep isn’t a morning thing, it does determine the morning. Productive people do get better and more sleep than unproductive people. They go to bed at a decent time (usually the same time each night) and get up at the same time each morning, so their life is more routine. A good night of sleep goes a long way to having more energy and better clarity to conquer the day.

A great day starts the night before.
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5. Plan your day. All of us have known the feeling of our day getting away from us. That doesn’t happen to productive people. They don’t waste time. They don’t sit in meetings they shouldn’t be in; they check their email on their timetable, not someone else’s. The first thing I do after reading in the morning is list the 2-3 most important things I need to accomplish in a day and then strive to do those things.

What are the 2-3 most importnat things you need to accomplish today?
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You might think you don’t control your schedule or your kids hijack your morning. And that might be true, but as Carey Nieuwhof points out in At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor, you control more of your time and schedule than you think. The key is to figure out what you control and schedule and focus on that time. 

How you start your day determines how your day turns out.
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Each Friday I share some posts that I’ve come across in the last week. They range in topics and sources but they are all things I’ve found interesting or helpful that I hope will be interesting and helpful to you. Here are 7 posts I came across this week that challenged my thinking or helped me as a leader, pastor, husband and father:

1. 7 Things Christians Should Give Up To Reach Unchurched People by Carey Nieuwhof
2. Six Ways to Encourage your Pastor by Charles Stone
3. Leadership Is About Emotion by Meghan M. Biro
4. 7 Good Things to Say to Your Pastor this Weekend by Chuck Lawless
5. Richard Branson’s 5 A.M. Workout and 5 Other Morning Habits of Successful Billionaires by Jessica Stillman
6. How to Stop Wasting Time in Meetings by Dan Rockwell
7. Are You on Track if You Lead a Church of Less Than 100? by Ed Stetzer

The post Six Ways to Encourage your Pastor & 6 Other Posts You Should Read this Weekend appeared first on JoshuaReich.org.

Have you ever had this happen?

You know exactly what you want your spouse, child, boss, employee or friend to do? You know what you want them to say, how you want them to respond…and they don’t?

Can your spouse read your mind?
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In fact, they do the exact opposite.

They solve instead of listen. They disobey instead of obey. They shut down instead of engaging. They drop the ball instead of following through and finishing a project.

What do you do when someone does the exact opposite of what you ask?
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In his book The Power of the Other: The startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond-and what to do about it, Dr. Henry Cloud gives an example that every married couple can relate to (I’ll paraphrase):

A woman shared with Dr. Cloud her frustration with her boyfriend.

She feels disconnected from him. So, she tells her boyfriend, “I want you to connect with me more.”

Now, men know this line. Women know this line.

The problem is that men and women have different ideas about what this means, what this looks like and how to accomplish it.

The results for this woman are the results that thousands of others have experienced.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing changed.

Why?

What to do when you feel disconnected from your spouse.
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The problem comes in that we are not clear. There isn’t anything measurable in our relationship requests.

In our minds, we know what things like “feeling loved”, or “being more connected” mean, doing a project the way we want, or what it means for a teenager to be responsible.

We just expect them to have the same definition as we do.

Think for a minute if you fall into any of these categories.

If you’ve told your spouse I want to feel more connected or loved by you and then nothing happened. Here’s why…

You never told your spouse what feeling more connected or loved means. How can they do that? For each person that is different. Is that talking about your day? What specifically do you want to talk about? Details? Feelings? A running commentary of what happened?

Now, many couples tell me that deciding this is silly. Your spouse should just know. Your spouse is a mind reader.

But they aren’t.

Here’s an example every couple has experienced.

The wife begins talking about an issue in her life. A frustration at work, with a friend or a child. Before she finishes, the husband jumps in with 3 steps to a solution, claps his hands and says, “there you go.” He solved it.

Now she’s mad.

Why?

Because she wanted one thing and he gave her another. What she wanted and needed was to be understood and have a listening ear, not someone to solve it. She sought connection and he sought helping.

Most frustrations and arguments in any relationship (family or work) stem from a failure to communicate expectations and needs.

Most frustrations and arguments in any relationship come from a failure to communicate expectations and needs.
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Take whatever your need and desire is: to feel loved, connected, for your teenager to take responsibility and define it with them. What that would look like and mean.

Those words are too fuzzy and personal to leave to chance.

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As part of our  Breathing Room series at Revolution I shared 6 simple ways to create margin in your life so that you are able to enjoy what really matters. If you missed them, here they are:

1. Get a good night sleep. 
2. Take a break every 90 minutes.
3. Control electronics instead of letting electronics control you.
4. Pay people to do what you hate.
5. Life the life you want, not the life others want you to live.
6. Use your schedule for your advantage.

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On Sunday, I finished our Breathing Room series at Revolution by looking at how to find breathing room between work, life and everything that has to get done. This week, I want to share 6 simple ways I’ve done that and you can to. I’m going to share one each day so you have time to process them and hopefully put some things into practice.

The first one we looked at was how to get a good night sleep. 

The second one: Take a break every 90 minutes. 

I came across this idea in the book The Power of Full Engagement. The point the authors tried to make is that 90 minutes is the length that your body and brain can handle anything. Once you go past 90 minutes, you are less engaged, less alert and ultimately, less useful at whatever you are doing.

So, take a break every 90 minutes.

Immediately, you are thinking, I can’t do that.

You already do this. You scroll through social media, go to the bathroom, stand and talk to someone at work. The amount of time we waste in our day is unbelievable.

The problem is: we aren’t proactive about taking breaks well. We don’t plan them.

Does this always work? Not always.

Here are some ways to do this:

1. Plan your day and think through when you’ll take breaks.
2. Don’t lead a meeting longer than 90 minutes.
3. Check your email at lunch and before you leave work. This one thing will make an enormous impact.
4. If you sit at a desk, get up and walk around every 90 minutes. We do this with our kids during homeschooling as well (they run around our culdesac every 90 minutes).

Tomorrow we’ll look at how to create margin when it comes to electronics.

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There is an incredibly simple time-management principle that has guided my decisions and how I manage my time.

While it is simple, it has far-reaching implications. Here it is:

Every time you say yes to something, say no to something else.

Every time you say yes to something, say no to something else.
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If you run a company or a church, you can’t do everything. In your family, you can’t afford everything; you can’t sign your kid up for every activity (although lots of parents try).

It’s very simple. If you say yes to something, you will have to say no to something else. I was talking with a couple recently and they were wrestling with whether or not the wife should go back to work. They have small kids, money is tight, and they said, “It would help us financially.” I told them this idea and said, “If you say yes to working, you will make money. But you are now spending less time with your kids and someone else is raising them, you are bringing stress into your life that isn’t there now because you will be home less, because of working.” I kept going but you get the idea.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Every weekend, every weekday we make choices about how to spend our time. When a man chooses between spending time on the golf course or at the lake with his buddies, versus with his children, he is saying yes and no to something. We might say yes to what we want to do, but at the same time, say no to investing in our kids or an important relationship.

At the end of the work day, when we decide to take work home, stay just a little bit longer as opposed to getting home, getting to the gym to get some exercise, spend time with friends. We say yes to something and no to something. By saying yes to working late and yes to more stress, we are saying no to a sustainable pace, no to spending time with friends that would relax us or help us to unwind, no to exercising so that we can be healthier.

You can’t say yes to every kind of music, dress, style, and service time. Pick one.

Pastors try to fight against this in their churches. “If we have a program for everybody, we will reach everybody,” they say. But if you shoot to reach everybody, simply you will reach nobody. You can’t say yes to every kind of music, dress, style, and service time. Pick one.

When I planted Revolution Church, I struggled with this every day. As a pastor, there are so many people to meet with. You don’t want to say no to anyone because they might leave, and you need everyone you can get, all the givers you can muster. This often leads you to running ragged, not resting well, not spending time with your family or time with Jesus. We rationalize that we’re serving people, helping them, and that next month we’ll take that Sabbath, that date night.

As a parent, it is easy to do this as we run our kids from one activity to the next in an effort to give them a well-rounded life. By doing that—by saying yes to running their kids everywhere—we are saying no to family dinners, family devotions (often), but we are saying yes to more stress in their life as a family. Many couples sacrifice their marriages for their kids, pouring their time and energy into their kids instead of their marriage as the most important relationship in the family. This is one reason why more divorces happen in year 25 than any other year of marriage now. Empty nesters don’t know each other without their kids.

HOW TO SAY YES AND NO

We say yes and no in our family. We say yes to exercising and a healthy lifestyle. I’ve shared in other places about my journey of losing 130 pounds and keeping it off. Every time we go to the gym or make a meal plan to eat a healthy diet, we are saying yes to health and longevity in life. We have to say no to sleeping in later (as I get to the gym by 6 a.m.), to late night snacks, to too many chicken wings, and to swearing off my beloved Frappuccino.

When we got married, we decided I would work and Katie would stay home. We said yes to her staying home and no to a lot of other things. Other families have nicer things or go on nicer vacations than we do because of this choice. That’s OK. When we made this choice, we knew what we were saying yes and no to.

You need to know the implications.

We say yes to spend time with certain people and no to others. Pastors feel the strain of wanting to be with people, spending time with as many people as possible. But it is simply impossible. For our family, we seek to spend time with the pastors and their wives at Revolution Church, the MC leaders I coach and those in our MC and those our MC is seeking to reach. That is what we as a family we have said yes to. This means we have said no to other things and other people.

You need to know the implications. When you say yes to something, you say no to something else, maybe multiple things, but it happens every time.

IT’S OKAY TO SAY NO

This at the end of the day is what drives many of us to say yes. We have this desire to appease people, to be comfortable, to make others like us. This is what drives so many of us to not say no and to say yes too much.

When someone asks if they can meet with me, I want to help them, I want to say yes. Often I’m able to, but many times if I say yes to that opportunity, I will say no to something else. It might be a date night with Katie, time with my kids, a nap that I need, and my sermon prep time. When we say yes to the wrong things, it is often because we want to make someone like us, approve of us, and be comfortable in a relationship.

FOCUS

This is really a question of focus. When we say yes and strategically, we live more strategically. One helpful thing for me has been to lay out my ideal week and identify what the most important things for me to accomplish each week are. This helps me to see the time I actually have available for things that pop up at the last minute, it helps me to gauge if I can say yes to those opportunities without hurting the most important things.

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I was talking with another leader today about how to use your time as a leader. As a pastor, there is a lot to get done. People to meet with, sermons to write and preach, growing as a leader, developing leaders, counseling, walking with others. Throw in being married, a parent and the list continues to grow.

The same can be said about any job. There typically is more to do than time to do it in.

The question then becomes, “What do you do? How do you decide what you do?”

The answer to this question determines a lot about your effectiveness as a leader, spouse, parent, friend.

Typically, we do what is urgent or is a need. For many pastors, they meet with the people who are the loudest, the ones who are clamoring for attention. They might also meet with the ones who ask the most or people they want to keep happy.

As a leader, you need to continually ask yourself a series of questions about how you spend your time:

1. What do I do that adds the most value to my church or organization?
2. What uses my gifts and talents to their fullest extent?
3. What do I love to do that energizes me?
4. What can’t I give away?
5. When am I most alert, creative, awake to do those things?

5 questions to use your time wisely
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For me, the elders have determined that I add the most value to Revolution through preaching and then developing leaders (through the staff and missional communities), and connecting with new people. There are others leaders at Revolution who fill in gaps in other areas.

This means, I need to block out time for my sermon prep. I need to make sure it gets prime time for when my mind is alert, I’m creative and can get some quiet. For me, that is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. I’m most awake in the morning. I can clear my calendar in the mornings, etc. This means I don’t check my email until lunch on those days. I stay away from breakfast meetings on those days (unless I need to schedule one).

Think in terms of percentage, not hours. This is a helpful idea for me. If you think about something you do, you might think, “I only spent 5 hours on it this week.” That might be true, but if you worked a 45-50 hour work week, that means you spent 9% of your week on that one thing. Was that strategic? The best use of your time? Was that a good way to use almost 10% of your week? I don’t know the answer to that. But thinking in terms of percentage of time instead of hours has been a helpful change for me.

Needs are real and will always be there. Some needs can wait, most needs are not as pressing as they first seem. Someone else may be able to meet the need in your place, and may do a better job than you at meeting that need.

I keep coming back to how can I be more strategic, how can I use my time to get the most value for the kingdom out of it, how can I steward my time well.

How to be more strategic in how you spend your time
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